


the homewrecker's guide to gardening

by sunbirds



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Cannibalism, M/M, Paranoia, one-sided relationships, thoughts of homicide, violent impulses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 16:26:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbirds/pseuds/sunbirds
Summary: He'd like to tear those children into pieces. He'd like to bury all of their parts into the ground and see if anything grows or if the grass rots and the soil crawls with worms.At least if a tree sprouted and bore fruit they'd have been a little bit useful to him.





	the homewrecker's guide to gardening

**Author's Note:**

> it's my "saix wants to do murders" fic!!!
> 
> big disclaimer? there's very little chance of actual romance happening here. the ships are tagged only because of an unreliable narrator. but, hey, i never know what i'm doing, so maybe i'll change my mind.
> 
> i plan for all the chapters of this to be pretty short, please don't hold your breath for lengthy ones
> 
> as always, totally unedited

* * *

It’s nothing new to wake up with a splitting headache. As usual, it starts between his brows and sinks into the deepest indentation of his scar, a chisel driven into a notch for the hammer to strike away at until his whole skull feels cracked open. He squeezes his eyes shut like that will keep him from falling apart. It doesn’t really help, and it never does, but there is unnatural light in this place and closing them at least makes it feel like he can stop the painful constriction of his pupils. 

There are familiar voices around him, but the words are hard to make out. They’re talking at him, or about him, and not _to_ him, or that’s what it feels like. Somebody puts a hand on his shoulder, and he jolts, smacking it away and pushing his upper body up off of the floor. He can’t keep his eyes closed forever.

He opens them, and stares down at his gloved hands against the metal flooring. There’s light there, too, peeking through cracks or encased by glass under the floor. It thrums there, leaves a faint electrical buzz ringing in his ears underneath the chatter from others.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Zexion says, but the voice drips with docility that marks him as somebody else. 

Somebody. 

He understands, now. No, it’s not that he hadn’t understood, it had come to him immediately, but the thoughts are difficult to line up correctly. 

Ienzo extends a hand, glancing back at his larger companions on the off chance that he needs help with this. That something will go awry. Maybe he’s right to be wary; their history is not full of fond memories. He must have been living this recompleted life too comfortably, has become forgetful, to be approaching at all. He is a fool, or pretending blissful ignorance. For what gain is a mystery, but nothing is beyond the scheming type. “You’re probably feeling disoriented.” 

Not really. As with the headaches, he’s used to these fuzzy lines of thoughts, too, of having to recollect the pieces and put them together. This setting is different, and so are the emotions that come with it, but the general feeling is all the same. He only needs to shake off the past as easily as everyone else has.

He takes the hand offered to him and picks himself off of the floor, reborn. It just doesn’t feel that way.

* * *

Lea arrives, and he can’t decide if it’s sooner than expected, not soon enough, or if he’d even expected anything at all. Nobody had made any calls. Lea had just come and let himself be pointed in the right direction to where his former friend, enemy, current _something_ had holed himself up. It’s comforting and terrifying, and worse that he can recognize it as those things.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen Lea in anything other than their typical black coat. He’s startlingly different and remarkably familiar all at once, and it had only taken a change in outfit. He grins as he approaches, sharp as ever, and lifts his arm to show off the hard suitcase he’s holding. Blue, patterned.

“Knew we’d be seeing more of each other.”

_Had_ he known, or was this false bravado? Hindsight is 20/20, and Lea has always been the sort to posture. Something about it is grating, here and now.

Thinking about it, it’s that this is the only greeting he’s getting. Another case of sweeping past transgressions under the rug. He was content after fighting, that that might have been the only peace he’d get to make. Now that he’s here, with his wilted heart, standing toe-to-toe with one of the many he’s wronged, with the most _important_ of them all, it feels—

“Hellooooo? I came all this way and you’re just standing there like a statue. Should I be worried? Did something get all rattled around and messed up in the whole--” here, Lea gestures widely with both arms, suitcase swinging in his grasp by the handle, but the movement seems meaningless. Neither of them know what to call it, it seems. “Y’know, recompletion process?” 

No. Maybe. He’s not sure.

“No, Lea,” he deadpans instead, once he finds his voice. It doesn’t feel like the first thing he should be saying, either. Ienzo had been right. He’s disoriented. 

“Oh, hey, actually… Nah, forget it.”

He’s so tired of being left in the dark that he finds himself leaning forward, probing.

“What is it?” 

Lea’s already crossing the room, setting the trunk down on a dusty old table and giving it a fond pat before he turns on his heel, folding his arms over his chest– it’s broader, these days, and he looks good, healthy– as he stares.

“I was gonna say that I’m sticking with Axel. But since it’s you, Isa, I guess I don’t mind either way.” 

He lets that information settle in his brain for a moment. It makes sense. Lea hasn’t surrounded himself with enough people that know him as such, and he’s lived meaningfully under ‘Axel’ as a moniker. He can guess a few reasons more, all loosely connected, but none of them really matter, or they shouldn’t. If he dwells too long on it, he’ll get another headache.

Something in him aches, deeply, and then it pierces, sharply, and he exhales, nods. 

“Let’s not leave room for confusion. I’ll call you Axel.” 

Axel fixes him with a strange look that he doesn’t want to bother parsing out right now.

“Sure. And…”

“Saïx. Saïx is fine.”

He’s not like Axel, he doesn’t want to keep ‘Saïx’ just because that’s the name the most people know him by. He wants to keep it because he _doesn’t_ want to keep it. 

But Isa–it just doesn’t fit anymore. Saïx knew that the moment he was left to his own devices and had the chance to look in the mirror. The color of his eyes could change, the length of his ears could shorten, but that scar would always be left at the end of the day, and it meant something so much more than an unfortunate mark on an otherwise smooth-skinned face.

It would be all too easy to play the game Axel plays and kick things under the proverbial rug, but he thinks he deserves this one, this name, the reminder, all of them. He has too much to atone for before he can ever hope to be the boy, the man, he used to be. 

Axel doesn’t look so impressed or approving with Saïx’s acceptance of the circumstances, but he nods anyway. He cracks a smile that reminds Saïx of another time, when they were young and knew it was a bad idea to sneak around the castle grounds but egged each other on despite it.

“Okay. Saïx, then, we can work with that. New you, new clothes, how about that? Get dressed, we’ve got places to be.”

His heart, his poor, underused heart, soars, for reasons he’s been unable to–unwilling to–put a name to since– a while, it’s been a while. Places to be. Together? It will be the first time in a long time that they’ve gone anywhere without the backdrop of the Organization breeding tension between them. They can talk. They can say all of the things Saïx is disappointed that they’re not saying now.

Axel pats the suitcase again, pointedly, and starts heading for the door to give Saïx privacy.

“Where, Axel?” He asks, just before Axel can slip out the door.

He doesn’t turn, just waves his hand in that flippant way of his. “Gotta meet up with Roxas and Xion. Lots of bridges to unburn, better that you get a running start, yeah?”

The door shuts behind him with a quiet click that doesn’t match the sound Saïx imagines his heart would make if only the noise of it sinking were audible. His headache returns. 

* * *


End file.
